The short story: My wife and I witnessed a Hobie 16 get decimated by a storm on the ocean. We had put in on the beach to wait it out. The guy ended up with only a Jib and was trying to make it back to shore directly against the wind. Once normal winds had resumed, we put out and caught up with him. He couldn't raise his mainsail again and he only had one rudder left which was on a broken hinge. He was dragging lines in the water, his jib was poorly deployed and he said he didn't know what the telltales were really for. And... "Im fine, I don't need help" 3/4 mile out to sea. Convinced him to throw us a line and my Trusty Wave ("Zoe the Cat"), started making headway, pulling in the 16. bout 40 min later his sons showed up in a boat and took him ashore. Craziest part. The left the Cat in the ocean and it drifted away. At least that's how it looked to us as we sailed off.

Very proud of the Waves performance. Of course, the sailor apparently makes all the difference.